


Easy Breezy Beautiful Clever Girl

by leupagus



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/pseuds/leupagus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ridiculous things Steve will do for Grace. And Danny, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It's just a five-minute trip to the office and back to fetch his wallet from his desk (where he leaves it in full expectation of Steve offering to buy him a beer like a punk and trying to weasel out of the bill). Danny hates his apartment but he can't deny the advantages of being that close to work.

And the disadvantages, like Steve picking him up most mornings like they're going on a date. But the larger point is that he didn't worry about leaving Gracie at home, curled up and miserable on the couch watching "Lilo and Stitch" for the fortieth time, sick with some kind of flu-cold-virus thing that doesn't make her throw up but does make her make faces at everything except shave ice.

Except when he gets back to the apartment complex and walks up to the door, he can see it's just a little ajar and there's a voice, not Gracie's, not--

There's not a lot of thinking involved, he'll admit, in the next ten seconds. Mostly he just kicks the door in and prepares to kill whoever's in there with the coat rack, since his gun's in its lock box in his bedroom.

Maybe it's that he didn't allow himself to think about what he'd see on other side of the door, but when he gets it open he's so surprised his jaw actually falls open. He always thought that was just an expression, but apparently seeing Steve McGarrett in a pink and purple-rhinestone-covered tiara is all it takes.

Gracie looks up, smiling even though she's still got dark circles under her eyes where she hasn't been sleeping all that well

"Danno look," she says, "Steve said he'd play princess tea party with me."

"I can see that," Danny says. His heart rate's coming down, a bit, but now he's taking in the scene and its' still a little unbelivable. Steve's curled up on the floor across the coffee table from Gracie, and from somewhere mysterious there has been produced a very pink tea set. Danny's willing to bet all the money in his pocket that it's a present from Steve, because Steve went all goofy-faced yesterday when Danny had to bail early to take care of Grace's diseased self. And also because Grace is the sweetest, most wonderful, most spoiled little girl on the planet -- Stan's got nothing on a five-0 team consisting of Chin Ho, Kono, and the guy who thinks buying hotel rooms for strangers is a good way to bribe his way into their affections.

"Uh," Steve says, quick-witted as ever.

"So are you supposed to be Cinderella or Snow White?" Danny asks, coming around to sit next to Gracie and feel her head. She's still too warm, but she looks better. Although that could be due in large part to Steve -- Danny suspects his daughter of being in love with Steve the same way she's in love with the Jonas Brothers or Black Beauty.

"She's Sleeping Beauty, Daddy," Gracie says with that slightly disappoving frown that makes her look just like Rachel. Strange how it drove Danny batshit then but on Gracie it just looks cute. "She's under a spell by the wicked fairy."

"She?" Danny says, and wishes for a minute that he had enough quickness to get his phone out and grab a picture before Steve killed him to death. Knowing him, though, he'd accidentally send a text message to his dentist saying "ASDLFHAS" before being ninja'ed into the next life.

"I'm a princess, Danno," Steve says evenly, and Danny's saved from stroking out due to laughter by the whining of the tea kettle (what the fuck, he doesn't have a tea kettle, Steve needs to stop populating his apartment with shit). Steve gets up, putting one hand up to his head to make sure the tiara stays on. "You want some tea?"

Gracie looks expectant, so Danny says, "Uh, sure. Any chance of making it an Irish or whatever?"

Steve looks remarkably pissy for someone wearing purple and pink rhinestones.

"It was just a question," Danny adds defensively.


	2. Chapter 2

After the Tiara Incident, which like most Steve-related shenanigans gets capitalized (witness: the Shark Tank Fiasco, the Great Door Kick-In of 2010, etc.), Danny notices a disturbing uptick in the amount of time Steve spends with Grace.

Not in any kind of -- Danny doesn't think, not for a minute, that there's anything going on. Mostly because of Grace herself, who's about as trusting as a rabid badger and has been known to report her _grandmother_ for smoking on hospital grounds. She's taught _other kids_ about Stranger Danger and what to do if someone you love is hurting you; one day Grace is going to get big enough to just punch the people she doesn't like, and Danny's kind looking forward to it.

Besides, there are many, many other reasons why it's disturbing. For one, Grace starts asking about jungle camo.

"Jungle what now?" Danny asks. They're driving out to the North Shore for a day of hiking on some kind of school-sponsored thing, something that Grace has been jumping around about for two weeks and that Danny's had to buy special boots for.

"Camo," Grace repeats patiently. "Steve said that it's the best way to blend in and I wanted to try it out."

"Steve said--" Danny's about five steps behind this conversation. "Hold up. Steve's coming on this trip?"

"Daaaaad," Grace says. "I _told_ you. Steve asked if he could come and Mrs. Hampten said it was okay."

He doesn't remember any of this, and Grace is staring out the window, a sure sign that she's telling him a great big whopper. He considers calling her on it, but honestly, he wants to keep her tells to himself. "Right, right," he says instead. "Okay, so he's going to be teaching fifteen eight-year-olds about jungle camo? I can't see this going badly."

Danny pulls up to the parking lot at the head of the trail and finds a crowd of kids and parents, all clustered around a certain black truck. Danny gets out of the car and he can hear giggling and Steve's voice saying, very seriously, "Now remember, you want to keep track of what you're leaving behind when you're in the forest. Everything has its place, and your job is to be in the place you're supposed to be."

Gracie scrambles out of the car and runs ahead as Danny walks up; the kids are all submitting, with varying degrees of wiggling, to Steve and a couple of the more highly-polished mothers who are smearing black and green and grey paint all over their faces. Gracie runs up to Steve and gives him one of her flying-tackle hugs; he manages to catch her with one hand and finish up on a wide-eyed little boy. "Hey, Highness," Steve says, which is another disturbing thing where Steve's got a nickname for Grace and Grace calls Steve Aurora sometimes. Danny doesn't touch any of it with a ten-foot pole.

"Do me next please," Grace demands, the "please" more of a punctuation than a politeness.

"Well, there's a couple of kids before you," Steve says, but he straightens up with her still in one arm, and she laughs and holds on while he walks over the few feet to where Danny's standing. "I think this belongs to you," he says.

Danny uncrosses his arms and takes Grace, who's still smiling wide and bright-eyed. "So what's the plan here?" he asks. "Kids are all going off and we're supposed to find them in the wilds?" He waves at the looming forest with his free hand.

Grace wriggles free and goes running off to talk to her friends, who are already painted up and squealing. Steve watches them go, that half-brooding, half-fond look that he's always got on his face whenever he deals with kids. Then he snaps his attention back to Danny. "No," he says, sounding half-surprised. "The kids and me and Kayla," he nods at one of the mothers smearing makeup, "We're going to hunt you guys. The kids all get a handful of tags, and if they find you, they give you a tag. Then at the end we see which kid tagged the most parents." Steve seems to mistake Danny's inability to speak for assent. "I used to do this in boy scouts."

"What the he... hecky darn kind of boy scouts were you part of?"

Steve rolls his eyes. "It'll be fine. This part of the forest is less than two square miles, and it's flanked on all sides either by roads or the ocean. All the kids know to stay in this section; it's probably the safest place they can learn this stuff."

"Why would they ever, you know, _ever_ , need to learn how to track people through the jungle?" Danny asks. "I'm genuinely curious."

"The parents are all excited about it," Steve says, with that same calculated shrug he gives whenever the Governor's green-lit some truly insane plan he's cooked up.

"Oh, God, this is going to end in lawsuits and broken bones," Danny sighs. But Steve's right -- everyone is gung-ho about the idea, and he ends up going off with a half-dozen dads along the trail, trying to think of all the ways in which he's going to kill Steve.

"So how long you guys been together?" Harold, or maybe Howard, Bettinski asks. He's huffing and puffing along the trail, and Danny hates to admit it, but if he hears feral children in the distance, he's abandoning this guy to get eaten first. "You and Steve," Harold/Howard adds with a wheeze.

"Uh, about six months," Danny says. "Seems longer, though."

"Yeah, it happens like that," Howard/Harold agrees. "I remember meeting Mia and boom, it was like we'd been together our whole lives."

"Yeah. Wait, no," Danny realizes, but Harold/Howard's stopping for a rest and sure enough, Danny can hear high voices getting closer, probably talking about a leaf that's gotten broken off a tree or some damn thing. Time to put social Darwinism to work. "I'll catch you later," he adds, and Howard/Harold laughs like he knows what Danny's thinking.

"I'll tell your partner you left me to die," he threatens good-naturedly.

"You do that," Danny says weakly, and scrambles to keep up with the other guys.

He spends the next two hours alternately getting ambushed by terrifying jungle-cat children and being told by various parents how sweet Steve is and how good it is to see Danny with someone. "I mean, Rachel and Stan are great, just, great," Kayla says hurriedly, gathering the tags from her half of the kids and handing them to Danny. "But you know, Steve's really taken an interest in being the best dad he can be, it's nice."

"It's... nice," Danny repeats weakly. He pockets the tags.

Around noon he gets a two-second warning before something glomps onto his ankle and there's a banshee wrapped around his waist; he makes an abortive motion toward his non-existent sidearm before realizing that the banshee is his daughter. Sort of. She's gotten mud into her _braids_ somehow, and there's a long red scratch on her left arm.

"Okay, okay, you got me, monkey," Danny says. "Just make it a quick death."

The glomper turns out to be Grace's best friend Hannah; they make a complicated whistling sound and a third kid, the infamous Tommy, appears out of nowhere. "He's the lookout," Gracie explains.

"Lookout -- where's the rest of the kids?" Danny asks. "Where's Steve?"

"We're a splinter cell," Tommy explains proudly. "We're called Strike Force Ultra Max."

"Oh my God, _so many lawsuits_ ," Danny groans. "Look, I want you guys to stay with me for the rest of the day, it's not safe for you to be out around, there could be wild boar or anything--"

Hannah and Tommy glance at each other and -- holy shit, they're _gone_ , melted into the forest like they were fucking wizards or something. Grace just sighs.

"What, do not give me that," Danny says, shaking his finger at her and feeling way too much like his dad. "I want to make sure you're safe."

"Danno," Grace says, in a reasonable tone of voice, "If a wild boar came and attacked us, what would you be able to do?"

"... that is a fair point," Danny admits, and the next thing he knows Gracie's gone too. Steve's going to die _so much_.

He's on his way back to the parking lot -- maybe, he's gotten so turned around he could be halfway into the Pacific before he realizes it -- when he gets attacked for the last time; he gets a full-body tackle into a moss-covered boulder and someone's plastered to his back. It's probably terrible, Danny reflects philosophically, that he knows it's Steve.

"All right, all right," Danny says, prying himself off the rock and turning around, "Tag me, babe, just get me out of here. Plus hey, let's talk about you letting my daughter go all Rambo in the middle of a school field trip."

Steve looks absolutely unrepentant. "You've got green on your cheek," he observes.

"Yeah, you've got green all over your face," Danny shoots back. Camo looks pretty ridiculous on everybody, Steve included, but he's still standing really close and this is the second time Steve's agreed to look stupid just to make Grace happy, and there's something in that, something Danny needs to get closer to see properly.

Steve swallows, and steps back. "Come on, you're the last one out," he says. "Everybody else is already at the parking lot."

"I'm not Natty Bumpo, here, okay?" Danny says, trying not to whine.

"I knew I should've given you the flare gun." Steve gestures for Danny to lead the way down the trail; he puts a steadying hand low on Danny's back, and Danny doesn't say a word about it.


End file.
